Sixteen years ago. This bag had been in this closet for sixteen years.
She never checked out.
Underneath the itinerary, at the bottom of the front pocket, his fingers found a metal key — not a key card, a regular key, old, thekind with teeth and a bow, the metal cold and heavy in his palm. No tag. No room number.
He pocketed it.
Asher was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him. “What’s that?”
“Someone else’s luggage. From 2008.” Levi stood up. “She never checked out.”
Asher’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes moved to the window. The fog against the glass. The shapes.
“Get dressed,” Levi said. “We need to get downstairs.”
The hallway was cold enough that his breath was visible. The overhead lights were on but dim, buzzing, working harder than they should have been. Zoe was by the window near their room, her arms crossed, looking at the glass.
“The front desk was supposed to call at 9:30,” she said. “Every room has a phone. None of them rang. Levi, this is weird, right?”
“It’s…different,” he said with a shrug he hoped was casual. Generally, telling the NPCs they were going to die didn’t help. “Let’s go meetup with everyone and figure out what happened.”
The lounge was thankfully warm, the fireplace having been turned all the way up. Jasper and Owen were already sitting closest to the fire, and Levi was pretty sure he watched Jasper exhale vapor. He took a step closer. Could the fog have gotten inside their lungs? What happened to them if it did? He watched Jasper’s cupped hand come up to his mouth, a faint blue glow coming from the bottom of it, and then Jasper started coughing as he pulled his hand away, more puffs of vapor popping out of his mouth as he did.
Oh.
He’s just vaping, probably something with THC, while there is depression fog and shadow monsters outside. Great.
Owen was in an armchair with a different book in his lap, but his posture was wrong — shoulders drawn in, eyes moving across the page too fast. He looked up when Levi came in.
“The fog events in this region average three to four days,” he said, repeating the same fact from last night, but his usual enthusiasm for spouting random facts was gone. “Three to four days.”
“The bus was supposed to come at ten,” Zoe said, ignoring Owen. “It’s almost 10:30.”
“Can we even see the parking lot from here?” Levi asked.
“No, but the bus might be sitting in the lot right now and the driver is waiting. Or it might not have come at all due to a lack of visibility,” she said, her mouth forming a line. “Something feels off.”
“Has anyone seen the staff this morning?” Tyler asked as he walked in, a duffle bag slung over his shoulder, with Elliot following behind him. “I haven’t seen anyone since the dinner last night.”
“At a place like this, the staff usually has quarters on-site,” Elliot said. “They could just be in the back. But someone should be at the front desk by now.”
“I knocked on the office door on my way down,” Zoe said, shaking her head. “No answer.”
No staff. No phone signal. No bus. No wake-up call.
Maddie appeared a few moments later, her makeup done and a tightness around her eyes. “The banquet hall was empty. They didn’t even have the coffee station set up like yesterday.”
Tyler sighed and moved to the north windows, his arms crossed over his chest, shifting forward, his body leaning toward the glass and pulling back. “Maybe the staff had a party and areall hungover somewhere? Honestly, it doesn’t matter. I’m ready to go home, and the bus could be sitting right out there,” he said.
“We can’t see anything past the porch,” Zoe said.
“Right. So someone should go check.” Tyler was already rolling his shoulders. “I’ll walk to the lot and check.”
“Tyler, don’t go out there,” Levi warned.
“It’s a parking lot, man. It’s like, what, a hundred yards? I ran that in college holding a football, dude.”
Levi shook his head, trying to think of a way to keep Tyler inside without saying more. “No…I don’t think we should go out there—”
